We have been looking at both Camtasia and Captivate for our online development. My question is if you have  knowledge of ANY Apple compatible capturing software with the same capabilities of Camtasia and Captivate? Or if either Adobe or Techsmith ever plan on making this available to the Apple community?

Two great questions centered around the notion that there is no screencasting killer app for the Mac. Now, I have a Intel-chip MacBook (it also runs Windows using Boot Camp), but I use Windows PCs for learning content development and production – it’s a work / life balance thing. As a result, I have never really considered the options for e-learning authoring on the Mac before now. But since I was asked, here’s my two cents worth… 

There are a number of choices. First, you could run the programs you’re evaluating (TechSmith Camtasia or Adobe Captivate) on a Mac with Windows / Boot Camp, but my view would be given the processing resources needed to generate content in a native Windows environment, running them via a virtual machine would be to enter a world of pain I’m not prepared to contemplate: there are too many links in the chain; it’s too risky. Murphy’s Law says that on a death march project with a deadline looming, the the authoring environment would not be up to the task, regardless of how well it behaved prior to to that.

With that option rejected let’s look at the other choices available for the MacOS. To answer my correspondent’s  second question first, it seems that TechSmith are looking at a mid-2009 release for the Mac version of Camtasia. Click here to view a screencast about the latest developments in this product.

 Camtasia for the Macintosh is soon to be a reality 

Not so good, I’m sad to say for Adobe fans. According to The Apple Blog there are currently no plans to bring it to the Mac. When questioned, the Adobe development team responded:

Captivate is built from a program that ties deeply into the core Windows. To bring it to the Mac would require a total rewrite, something that we’re not sure we can justify at this point. If we had significant interest from Mac users, it’d be a different story.

If you want to register your interest in a Mac version of Captivate, click here to let Adobe know via their feature request form.

Next to the the third of the “Big Three” rapid e-learning development authoring tools, Articulate similarly does not support MacOS natively. However, in a very comprehensive post here, guest blogger Jim Gritton (co-founder of GB Learning Consultancy) discusses

Parallels Desktop for Mac, followed by CrossOver Mac and now VMware Fusion. Both Parallels and Fusion are Windows emulators: they use virtualization technology to allow you to run Windows as a virtual machine alongside the Mac operating system, as you can see from the screenshot below:

While it may seem contradictory that I discuss an emulator here, Articulate is a little different, in that it can interact with Mac-native KeyNote-created presentations and even integrates with the Mac Dock (via Parallels).

Obviously more optimistic than me (see Death March above) Jim asserts that:

If you’re wondering about my set-up, I’m currently running Parallels Desktop with Windows XP on a 20-inch, all-in-one iMac, sporting a 2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo Processor, 1 GB memory and a 240 GB hard disk. This isn’t the fastest or most powerful Mac on the block, but it isn’t the slowest, either. I’m not going to pretend that running Windows applications using Parallels is as fast as running Mac applications natively on my iMac, but it’s no slouch. Nor has it let me down.

One approach that seems to me to have some potential is CrossOver Mac, which builds on the open-source implementation of the Windows API, Wine. This enables Unix-based operating systems (like Mac OS X and Linux) to run Windows applications “natively.” Hmmm… might look in to this myself, but it breaks my “Macs are for fun” work / life balance rule, in a thin-end-of-the-wedge kind of way…

What are we left with? Quite a lot, as it turns out.

In terms of native MacOS screencasting Mac, the evidence of my research suggests that Telestream’s ScreenFlow is the most popular application.

ScreenFlow Export wizard screenshot

According to their website ScreenFlow includes:

In the multiplatform world, Qarbon’s offering ViewletBuilder seems to have potential. This product seems to have some powerful e-learning features including LMS integration.

Qarbon’s ViewletBuilder

According to Qarbon, the product’s highlights are:

• Create and publish Flash tutorials and simulations in minutes
• Expand the reach of your online marketing with interactive slideshows and presentations
• Develop and deliver powerful, dynamic courseware without programming
• Capture detailed viewer responses with quizzes, tests, surveys and polls
• Seamlessly share Projects amongst Authors
• Integrate your content with your organization’s learning management system (LMS)
• Benefit from its multi-platform solutions Windows, Linux & Mac

From the open source world SWF Tools is also available for the Mac. SWF Tools is a collection of SWF manipulation and creation utilities written by Rainer Böhme and Matthias Kramm. It is released under the GPL.
Features included are:

• PDF2SWF A PDF to SWF Converter. Generates one frame per page. Enables you to have fully formatted text, including tables, formulas etc. inside your Flash Movie. It’s based on the xpdf PDF parser from Derek B. Noonburg.
• SWFCombine A tool for inserting SWFs into Wrapper SWFs. (Templates) E.g. for including the pdf2swf SWFs in some sort of Browsing-SWF.
• SWFStrings Scans SWFs for text data.
• SWFDump Prints out various informations about SWFs.
• JPEG2SWF Takes one or more JPEG pictures and generates a SWF slideshow.
• PNG2SWF Like JPEG2SWF, only for PNGs.
• GIF2SWF Converts GIFs to SWF. Also able to handle animated gifs.
• WAV2SWF Converts WAV audio files to SWFs, using the L.A.M.E. MP3 encoder library.
• AVI2SWF Converts AVI animation files to SWF. It supports Flash MX H.263 compression. Some examples can be found at examples.html.
  Font2SWF Converts font files (TTF, Type1) to SWF.
• SWFBBox Allows to readjust SWF bounding boxes.
• SWFC A tool for creating SWF files from simple script files.
• SWFExtract Allows to extract Movieclips, Sounds, Images etc. from SWF files.
• RFXSWF Library A fully featured library which can be used for standalone SWF generation. Includes support for Bitmaps, Buttons, Shapes, Text, Fonts, Sound etc. It also has support for ActionScript using the Ming ActionCompiler.

SWFTools has been reported to work on Solaris, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, HP-UX, MacOS X and Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/Vista.

If you want to experiment with a ‘lite’ authoring environment for the Macintosh, try free-to-use Jing (by TechSmith).

• Screenshot still image capture
• Record onscreen video
• Share instantly over the Web (FTP), IM, e-mail
• Audio Narration

Jing lacks many features that proprietary screencasting software has, including local saves, multiple output types, and delivery formats, but it’s free to use, so a restricted function set should be expected. Once content is captured and saved, a URL for the file is automatically created and can be shared with others to view or access.

So there you have it. A whistle-stop tour of content capture and rapid e-learning authoring tools for the Mac. I would be very interested to hear how Mac users fare with these applications, or can suggest any others that are used in this context on the MacOS platform. What really surprises me is that there aren’t more tools already, after all, the Mac is the doyen of the digital media development industry and I would have thought that the tools available for e-learning development would reflect this preference for the platform. But that’s another story.

NOTE WELL:

Given the number of positive comments I have made about TechSmith recently, I want to emphasize that I am in no way associated with them, and that the purpose of this blog is not to showcase or cheerlead any commercial interest. It just happens at the moment they seem to make the most effective tools in this market space. I would suggest to their competitors that they step up to the mark and compete with applications that really meet the needs of learning and development practitioners and I will certainly be pleased to discuss their solutions in positive terms. Equally, should anyone fall short of the mark (MPEG4  or FLV, anyone?) I will highlight it on the E-Learning Curve Blog with no prejudice.

–

What is the impact of the economy on you and your  organization? What are you doing as a result?

In response, I returned to a post I wrote about a year ago. While reflecting on the  LCBBQ I formed the view that the argument I outlined then bears repeating now. Where appropriate I have updated the article to reflect recent developments as the Recession turned into Depression.

The dialectic I am presenting here can be summarized in the following manner: will the positive economic, organizational, and social value of e-learning outweigh traditional human responses an economic crisis? What strategies can we use to ensure the survival of and even the growth of e-learning as an industry in these changing times?

So what’s changed in the e-learning industry since the last recession in 2001? I’ve outlined some discussion points below:

1. First of all: Traditional business practice
2. Developments in Infrastructure & Hardware
3. The E-learning Hype curve
4. Refinements in Content Development Methodologies
5. The Rise if the Read/Write Web
6. The PlayStation Generation – Digital Natives in the workplace

Scroll down to find out more about each of these points.
–
Traditional business practice
Historically, when a slowdown or company rationalization occurs, the first against the wall are the folks in the PR, marketing, and training departments. Typically, individuals and organizations revert to previously-learned behaviors in tough times; this usually means going through the process of carrying out tried-and-tested, though not necessarily logical responses to the problems put in front of them. The rationale is as follows:

• Profits are down
• Revenue projections aren’t great for the next 12/18 months
• We need to cut our costs
• We need to keep the guys that make the widgets (we need to have product to sell)
• We need to keep the managers of these people (or productivity will go down)
• We need to keep Human Resources in place to manage everyone obviously (it’s just a coincidence that I – that is the decision-maker – work in HR!)

• What about those training people? High travel costs for the ILT guys, they pull people out of work for 3 days to go on courses. Large budgets spent on implementing and maintaining an LMS/LCMS, third-party e-learning libraries, custom courseware etc, but they do seem to add value to the organization. And let’s face it, they don’t really improve the quality of our product, because they never convince us with their ROI metrics…
• Outcome: tea and sympathetic chat, and the Training team get their pink slips / P45s.

Sadly, I reckon that this will be strategy undertaken by a significant number of organizations over the next year or so. However….

…and it’s a big however.

Let’s look at the evidence for factors that have changed in the e-learning industry since 2001 and the recession following the Dot-Com Crash.

Infrastructure & Hardware
More-or-less general availability of high-speed internet access just wasn’t there in 2001. To take the example of the company I worked for at the time, our high-quality courseware was developed in Authorware and Director and delivered to customers on CD-ROM for distribution via their intranet or accessed directly from the disk. Our on-line courseware was a ‘lite’ version of the CD material – not out of choice, but because of the limited functionality that could be provided to a user via a 56k connection.

Over-compressed images, poor animation, and very poor audio – hardly the immersive learning solution that e-learning flattered to promise at the time. Assuming the learner could access the content successfully, the chances were that the PC (for it was always a PC) that they were using to view their content was processing and displaying the date at a rate that we wouldn’t find acceptable on a PDA now (screen-size excluded). Pentium or pre-Pentium processors, 8-bit sound cards, 16 colors, 800×600 pixel displays. And so on.

In short, we could see the potential, but our imaginations exceeded the available technology.

The e-learning hype curve
This brings me neatly to the e-learning hype curve (see Figure 1). Kevin Kruse described 2001 as the year that

…brought the harsh, steep slope of unfulfilled promises. Several high-profile providers shut their doors while many more announced large-scale layoffs in the face of missed revenue targets and crashing stock prices. E-learning advocates retreated to the more defensible ground of "blended learning. This year [went] down as the Trough of Despair.

Figure 1. The E-learning Hype Cycle

I would suggest through familiarization and use, learners expectations are more reasonable about what can be achieved (and perhaps more importantly how it can be achieved through digitally mediated delivery). Given this environment, organizations are now more willing to invest in e-learning as part of their overall training strategy. But is it perceived as a necessity or a luxury?

A year ago I wrote that:

I can’t answer that question right now. I suspect that I will be able to answer it 12 months from now, because there will be evidence as to whether decision makers consider e-learning to be a core requirement that effectively meets organizations’ training needs.

In light of recent research by Bersin & Associates among others, it seems that The Powers That Be in organizations have judged online training to be found wanting, and are responding by cutting budgets and reassessing learning & development strategies, apparently by beginning to disintermediate training by using non-formal and informal knowledge transfer methods in place of ‘e-training,’ LMSs, and VLEs.
 
Content development methodologies
I would assert that there is a real opportunity for e-learning here (if L&D professionals are in a to position stand their ground). Without going into the history of this too much, the development of (relatively) easy-to-use authoring tools like Captivate, Articulate (and a whole raft of others), Rapid E-Learning development methodology and the disintermediation principle means that e-learning has fewer up-front costs associated with it than at the turn of the century.

Similarly, if it’s done correctly it can be argued that  ongoing maintenance and support costs are lower than they ever have been. By developing content with smaller, more flexible teams, the value proposition of e-learning has been enhanced, and the total cost of ownership has been significantly reduced. Outside of e-learning, the take-up of podcasting and streamed media on sites like Blogger and YouTube demonstrates that this ease-of-use of tools and technologies has extended into the community at large.

The Read/Write Web
Who would have thought in 2000 that blogging, social networking, wikis and podcasts would be as big a part of life as they are now? At the start of the century, the Web (and e-learning) could at best be described as a half-duplex medium; it was pretty much all one-way traffic. The development of information platforms has facilitated knowledge-sharing, folksonomies, social interaction, and, key to all this, reciprocity.

We now live in a multiplex world of many voices and ideas, mediated by the internet. At the forefront in using these web technologies is the e-learning industry. By using these tools to develop content I feel we can demonstrate quite effectively that e-learning has a value now that it did not have a decade ago. I would assert that this is particularly true if you take a social-constructivist approach to learning. By the way, I’m happy to entertain debates about the role of formal as opposed to non-formal and informal learning in this environment.

The PlayStation Generation
Concomitant with the read/write web is the PlayStation generation that have grown up over the last number of years. In his seminal essay Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants (2001), Marc Prensky declares:

…students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach.
Today’s students have not just changed incrementally from those of the past, nor simply changed their slang, clothes, body adornments, or styles, as has happened between generations previously. A really big discontinuity has taken place. One might even call it a “singularity” – an event which changes things so fundamentally that there is absolutely no going back. This so-called “singularity” is the arrival and rapid dissemination of digital technology in the last decades of the 20th century.

Today’s students – K through college – represent the first generations to grow up with this new technology. They have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, videogames, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age. Today’s average college graduates have spent less than 5,000 hours of their lives reading, but over 10,000 hours playing video games (not to mention 20,000 hours watching TV). Computer games, email, the Internet, cell phones and instant messaging are integral parts of their lives.

Extending from this, there is a generation of workers who are comfortable with and practiced in the concepts and use of e-learning – take a look at the resources available on www.skoool.ie, an initiative for second-level students in Ireland. I was involved in the development of the first iteration of this site, and it’s changed a lot (for the better) since we took those first steps creating it 8 years ago. Similarly in third-level education, there have been significant developments in on-line learning, and I think that it’s fair to say that it has become quite embedded in the pedagogy employed by universities: tools like Moodle enable students to upload coursework, take tests, build their own knowledgebases and wikis, and have on-line discussions through a single point of access.

This generation is in the workplace right now. It will expect to learn new skills as their careers develop using the tools that they have always learned on in the past: that is, by using e-learning.

Conclusion
This is a blog entry, not an essay. But consider other factors including transport costs and training in the era of $100 a barrel oil and the value of virtual classrooms; the ROI of e-learning as opposed to traditional methods; even the impact of traditional ways of teaching on the environment ("e-learning" becomes "eco-learning" anyone or even ‘economical-learning’?). I think that if they are in a position to do so, learning professionals are repositioning themselves to re-use the skills they’ve acquired in different contexts – perhaps undertaking their activities from a different platform, or through working in a different domain of expertise.

Ultimately, I would say that all anyone can do at the moment is keep their powder dry and hope for the best in the short term, while preparing for what may be a completely different business environment when the green shoots of recovery finally emerge.

–

Figure 1. Presenter 7 Publish dialog box

Sure enough, Adobe Presenter 7 does have a ‘Publish to PDF’ output option (see Figure 1), accompanying the ‘Publish to My Computer’ and ‘Publish to Connect Pro’ rendering options available with the previous versions of Presenter (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. Presenter 6 Publish dialog box

Having only just installed Presenter 7, and while I have published some test presentations locally, I have yet to upload any PDF-formatted content to an LMS. So, I have no idea how well this output type functions in comparison to the more traditional XML, SWF, and HTML-formatted e-learning content package when it’s deployed from an online or networked platform.

I will carry out one of my famous comparisons between the two formats at some point in the future. My preliminary view is that the ability to distribute content as a PDF certainly opens up some interesting possibilities and opportunities.

____________________

References:

Adobe Presenter 7 Homepage: http://www.adobe.com/products/presenter/

–

Adobe Captivate is an e-learning tool (for Microsoft Windows) which can be used to author software demonstrations, software simulations, branched scenarios, and quizzes for distribution online or via CD-ROM.

Recording
Even before the term ‘Rapid E-Learning’ was coined (and Captivate was RoboDemo), this app was designed to be an e-learning authoring tool. As such, once opened, the author is  presented with three recording modes (Software Simulation, Scenario Simulation, Other),  depending on the activity you want to undertake. To capture content, the author carries out each step in the demonstration, in sequence. As with Camtasia, it’s possible to cycle between applications without interrupting the recording process. The author can pause or stop recording (at which point the software renders the media that has been captured) at any point. When the recording (or a section of a larger recording) is complete, Captivate opens in editing mode.

Post-production
Once the presentation has been captured, the content is displayed as a number of discrete slide, representing each interaction of the recording. A timeline is available to integrate audio, onscreen text, and other enhancements. Similar to Camtasia, the author can record audio while screen-capturing is in progress. In edit mode, the author can import, record and edit a voice-over narration and other audio elements into the presentation.

Deployment
Captivate saves files in a proprietary *.CP format, which is only readable by Captivate. Content is generated as ShockWave Flash (*>SWF), which can be played on most computers via a browser with the (nearly) ubiquitous Flash Player plug-in.

Uses
Once exported, content is easily distributed to a wide audience; as well a online delivery, content can also be distributed via CD-ROM or DVD, by e-mail, and on Adobe Connect. Learners can easily access Captivate content through learning management systems (LMSs) and content management systems (CMSs). Captivate is both AICC and SCORM conformant, facilitating learner usage tracking, as well as through scored quizzes and other interactions.

Instructional Uses
Captivate enables learning professionals to create new content and transform existing learning collateral in a (relatively) easy-to-use "one-stop" media creating environment. It’s unified API means that very little programming experience is needed to generate attractive, immersive e-learning content. 

Criticisms
As well as the positives, Captivate has some deficiencies; integrating, editing audio can be tricky, as can estimating slide duration; it’s a bit of a memory hog on long presentations, or content containing a range of media assets; it can take a LONG time to generate content. In terms of rendered files, it’s reliance on the SWF format, rather than, say Flash Video *.FLV) can make download times quite long when compared to its competitors. Finally, in an increasingly mobile world, devices like the iPhone cannot be used for playback.

Tomorrow:

~~~~~

Captivate vs. Camtasia – Head-to-head in a Fight for the Byte – It’s an E-Learning Authoring Tool Deathmatch!

~~~~~

By The Way: I’m toying with the idea of using Articulate: any experiences / war stories / opinions? 

–

Ever wondered how to capture demos for delivery online ?

I generally use two pieces of software to capture high-quality, post-produced demos. In this blog entry, I’ll give you a bit of background on Camtasia Studio, and in the next blog post I’ll discuss Adobe Captivate.

Camtasia Studio is a screen video capture program for Microsoft Windows, published by TechSmith. It is a screen-recording application that allows users to record almost anything on a computer screen, including application demonstrations and PowerPoint presentations. Users are able to use their own computers to demonstrate some aspect of motion-based content.

The presenter defines the area of the screen or the window to be captured before recording begins; it is also possible to capture the entire screen area.

Recording
Once Camtasia’s recording mode is activated, the presenter carries out all steps of the demonstration, in sequence. It is possible to move between applications without interrupting the recording process. The presenter can pause or stop recording at any time – at which point the software renders the input that has been captured – as well as apply user-defined settings, such as when and how to display the cursor.

Post-production
Once the presentation has been captured, the presenter is able to revise it by integrating multiple recordings, if required (and this is typically the case on longer-form demos and course learning objects). In addition, the presenter can dub in a voice-over narration, sound effects, as well as music onto the presentation. Camtasia also allows audio recording while screen-capturing is in progress, so the presenter can narrate the demonstration as it is carried out. Most presenters, however, prefer to wait until they have finished the screen capture, and then record the narration from a script as the application is playing back the recorded capture.

Deployment
The application  allows files to be stored in its own proprietary *.CAMREC format, which is only readable by Camtasia itself; this format allows for quite  small file sizes, even for longer presentations. Much more useful is that Camtasia also allows the generated video stream to be exported to common video formats which can be read by most computers, even if the Camtasia software is not installed, such as Flash FLV & SWF, Windows WMV and MPEG-4. MP3 audio and podcast files may also be generated.

Uses
Once exported, content is easily distributed to a wide audience; highly compressed files, such as files encoded in the FLV format are especially suitable for distribution online via platforms like Adobe Connect.

Instructional Uses

Camtasia is popular among instructors and learners because presentations are easy to produce and distribute, saving instructors the time to repeat presentations many times, especially in courses that teach a certain application or computing environment. Many learners appreciate the ease with which Camtasia-produced presentations can be viewed, especially presentations that are embedded into a web page and are shown in the client browser window.

Criticisms
One of Camtasia’s primary shortcomings is its long rendering times and excessive consumption of system resources during production. Output file generation times can be improved by using newer hardware, such as a dual processor system, as well as an increased amount of RAM.

Next Time: Captivate

–

So which service is better? Well, I guess that comes down to WIIFM – what’s in it for me. The broad sweep of features and functionality are pretty similar on both services: deficiencies in one are accommodated by lack of functionality in the other, so it really comes down to personal choice.

My user experience of authorSTREAM was slightly superior to that of SlideShare: upload and conversion times were lower on the former service, for example. Equally, the enhanced slide animation and transition support on authorSTREAM was a positive advantage, as was the ability to view presentations in full-screen mode via a third party environment (my blog in this case). I also prefer the extended functionality afforded by the desktop-based client client, as well as the better audio integration.

In the end… well, I recommend that you try both out yourself, and you decide which service meets your needs.

Since then, both services have been nice enough to keep me up-to-date with developments in their respective apps. As you can imagine, most of these updates are incremental changes in functionality, better app stability, and so on, but the latest update from SlideShare really excited me.

As an inveterate user of PowerPoint Add-ins (Camtasia, Presenter, PowerManual etc) I find the facility to generate e-learning content from within an authoring application to be an essential component of the Rapid E-Learning production process. As it happens, I’m presenting at an event tomorrow where my e-learning “wow factor” will be How to Create E-Learning Content in Four Mouse Clicks; and a PowerPoint add-in is an important part of that narrative.  

You can now generate e-elearning objects in PowerPoint and publish them to the SlideShare website, using the new SS ribbon add-in. This looks like being a very cool tool indeed, and if I get all my shopping done, I’ll install and test over the next few days.

–